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Blue Origin’s New Glenn will no longer launch a pair of probes to Mars next month, as NASA believes the rocket won’t be ready in time for the mission’s launch window.
The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (EscaPADE) smallsats were set to launch on board New Glenn at some point between October 13 and 21. A little over a month before liftoff, NASA decided to halt pre-launch preparations for the mission out of fear the rocket’s debut flight would be delayed, the space agency recently announced. The next available launch window is in spring 2025.
“The decision was made to avoid significant cost, schedule, and technical challenges associated with potentially removing fuel from the spacecraft in the event of a launch delay, which could be caused by a number of factors,” NASA wrote in a statement.
EscaPADE will use two identical spacecraft to study how solar wind interacts with Mars’ magnetic environment, and learn how it drives the atmospheric escape of the Red Planet, according to NASA.
NASA decided not to fuel the two spacecraft in case New Glenn isn’t ready for launch, avoiding the costly task of removing the fuel. The launch of the EscaPADE mission has to take place when Earth and Mars are aligned. “This is an important mission for NASA, and it’s critical we have sufficient margin in our prelaunch work to ensure we are ready to fly a tight planetary window,” Bradley Smith, NASA’s launch services office director, said in a statement.
Blue Origin has been developing its New Glenn rocket for more than a decade, with its inaugural launch initially planned for 2020. The heavy-lift launch vehicle has suffered several delays over the years, largely to do with the development of its engines. New Glenn relies on seven BE-4 engines, designed by Blue Origin, which have required extensive testing and redesign.
Earlier this year, New Glenn moved closer to its debut launch after undergoing a series of tests, and Blue Origin was awarded with NASA’s EscaPADE contract for its rocket’s first flight. Now that the Mars mission is off the table for New Glenn’s inaugural launch, the company will instead carry a type of technology for its Blue Ring orbital platform. It’s not clear when New Glenn’s first flight will take place, although an anonymous source told SpaceNews that its launch may be delayed by a few weeks to early November. That may be a slight budge compared to the rocket’s previous delays, but it still won’t be capable of supporting NASA’s mission to Mars.
Blue Origin agreed to move up New Glenn’s second flight to accommodate the Mars mission’s launch window next year. “We’re supportive of NASA’s decision to target the ESCAPADE mission for no earlier than spring 2025 and look forward to the flight,” Blue Origin wrote on X.
The partially reusable New Glenn rocket is capable of lifting 45 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO) and 13 tons to geostationary orbit. Blue Origin has been using its New Shepard rocket to launch paying customers to suborbital space, awaiting the highly-anticipated debut of New Glenn, which will now feature a different inaugural mission than initially planned.
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